Here are three more examples from the long list of jobs that kept many children away from school in the Victorian years.
The two children from Boughrood School in 1868 were probably having to try to improve the state of their father's fields by picking up as many stones as they could from the surface.
It would have been much easier work at school !

These entries from the school Log Books read -
July 19th 1899 - "Dismissed children at 3.40 as a great many of them are going on the hills to pick berries".
February 20th 1868 - "Edwin and Selina Lewis kept at home to pick stones".
September 22nd 1899 - "Very poor attendance, several children kept at home to carry water, nearly all the home springs being dry".

The last one is a bit more unusual, because it normally rains quite reliably in Wales !
There's yet another good excuse on the next page...

Another kind of harvest...